Is McLeish protest right?

Friday, 10/02/2012

by Steven Green, Shoot's Aston Villa blogger

After another disappointing result on Sunday rumours have been rife of a fan protest set to take place before the home game against Manchester City this weekend.

Villa supporters are split down the middle on this issue with some unsure as to whether it will have any positive effect at all and reasoning that it makes more sense to get behind the team and deal with at the end of the season.

I am one of these fans.

There doesn’t seem to be much logical thought going into this one. I attended the demonstration last summer opposing the appointment of Alex McLeish and it was an all round positive affair albeit unsuccessful. Carried off in the right spirit, it made its point without getting out of hand or embarrassing anybody.

However, there doesn’t seem to be much hope of avoiding the latter this time around. The season isn’t going as well as we’d all hoped but it isn’t going terribly either. I’m no fan of McLeish either and would like him to vacate the club at his earliest convenience but in reality this just won’t happen.

The season is too far-gone to consider overhauling the backroom staff and even if the axe were to be wielded who would replace him? There is a shortage of available managers at the moment that the fans would deem acceptable.

McLeish isn’t playing pretty football and his command of the dressing room is apparently next to none existent but after comparing the results of his first 23 games with those who have gone before him it is fair to say that better managers have started off worse, Martin O’Neill being one…

At some points this season it seemed to be going from bad to worse but the club has fallen behind and are obviously still in this long standing ‘transition period’ but it’s certainly not the first the club has survived, these things always happen in cycles.

Energies would be much better spent in getting behind the team inside the ground instead of highlighting what a truly awkward club Villa are to play for. Instead of attracting players for the future by filling our magnificent stadium and firing the claret and blue cannons we’ll only serve to keep some potentially exciting signings away by complaining about not being in the top six anymore and having to wear a Macron kit.

We as fans need to show as much ambition as the player on the pitch and this is not a great way of going about it. Stan Collymore said this week that you’re either a loyal fan or a loyal customer. It seems we have too many loyal customers.

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